Roman Empire

Payroll cost for a Roman Legion – Part 1 of 2

Line of Roman soldiers advancing in battle formation. Shields up, swords drawn. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

What was the payroll cost to staff a Roman Legion?

Earlier post discussed that until around 81 A.D. a Legionnaire was paid 225 sesterces a year.

With the help of a Wikipedia article, we can make a guess at the total payroll for a Legion. (A side note, amusing to me, is that several of the sources of this article are books I’ve previously read.)

As the first step, let’s look at the estimated staffing of a Roman Legion in about 100 A.D. Keep in mind this is assuming the Legion is fully staffed, which was never the case, as I’ve read in several places. This is also for a legion with 50 centuries instead of the authorized strength of 60 centuries earlier.

Staffing for Roman Legion in about 100 A.D.:

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Viking Era

Vikings must have developed considerable skill at gathering intelligence

How did that raiding party figure out where to land? Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

For a while now I’ve been pondering how the Vikings knew where and when to raid. How did they figure out where to find the large collections of gold and silver?

As the Vikings approached the shore of England or Ireland, they would not have been able to send ahead their camera-laden remote-controlled drones to locate monasteries in the region.

They would not have been able to look at the photos from a recon jet or check out the area with an L-5 observation plane.

The Vikings landing at Lindisfarne in 793 probably didn’t make a random landing, walk around for an hour or two, and just happen to stumble on a monastery laden with gold and silver. They must’ve had some idea it was there.

Likewise, while on a looting spree through Frankia, they would not have been able to enter “monastery” or “silver storage” on their GPS to get the distance and direction to the nearest loot. While traffic on the river might give away there is a prosperous city somewhere upstream, it would not have been visible from the water that there was a monastery a day’s walk to the northwest of the bend in the river.

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Roman Empire

Average pay for Roman Legionnaire

Silver Roman denarius. About one and a half day’s pay for a Legionnaire. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Another indication of average pay for Roman foot soldiers can be found in Wikipedia’s article Imperial Roman Army.

This pay rate applied during the reigns of Emperors Augustus and Vespasian, which means until about 81 A.D. After that point, debasement of the currency led to inflation and rising pay for soldiers. More on that later.

For general framework, this is the pay structure in effect during the time of the New Testament.

Here is a recap: 

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Viking Era

Ponder the supporting industry needed for shipbuilding and seafaring during the Viking age.

Largest reconstruction of a longship arrived in Dublin on 8/14/07 – “Viking Longship ‘Sea Stallion’ Arrives In Dublin” by infomatique is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Ponder the extent of support needed to keep seagoing fleets of longships going to sea. Those state-of-the-art weapons needed maintenance and supplies.

Robert Ferguson suggests in The Vikings – A History that shipbuilding would have been a significant industry in many communities for the duration of the Viking age.

Think about the range of skills needed, as he mentions:

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Viking Era

One frame of reference for comparing time to construct large projects

With about 40,000 hours of labor, you could build this in around 900 A.D. ….

Image of Viking longboat courtesy of Adobe Stock.

..or with about 55,000 hours of labor, you could build this in 1942 A.D. …

B-17 at March Air Base Museum; photo by James Ulvog.

 

I’ve noticed a few guesses of the time it took to build things during the Viking Age. Here are a few points of reference:

Construction time of one longhouse and perimeter of winter camp in Viking Era –

  • 24,192 hours – Long house 93’ long x 24’ wide x 25’ tall
  • 50,000 hours – 19’ tall wall around winter camp with moat 13’ deep x 13’ wide

How much labor did it take to construct a Viking longship?

  • 40,000 hours, surplus production of 100 persons for a year – Longship 98’ long (30 meters)
  • 28,000 hours, estimate of time for Vikings to build a 30 meter longship based on time for modern workers to recreate a longship using Viking techniques

In The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, Victor Davis Hanson provides extensive data about the economic output of various countries. In terms of hours to build a war machine, one tidbit is relevant here.

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Viking Era

Another idea on what kicked off the violent Viking Age

Viking shield wall – “Vikings in Archeon” by hans s is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

In The Vikings – A History Robert Ferguson suggests a different idea on the reasons for the start of the Viking Age, particularly in terms of the violence.

Chapter 3 on Causes of the Viking Age links together several things I’d not seen before.

One introductory comment points out that a Viking longship could be seen at a distance of about 18 nautical miles with good visibility. This is based on observations using modern reconstructions. If the sailors had a favorable wind, they could cover that distance in about an hour. If there were watchers on the shore there would be perhaps one hour notice before the arrival of a raid.

Author explains there were three major political powers that controlled Europe at the time. The Frankish Empire controlled most of Western Europe from what is today France to about the Oder river. The Byzantine Empire controlled what is currently Greece and Turkey. Several Muslim caliphates controlled Spain, Northern Africa, and what we call the Middle East.

Charlemange’s forced conversion of the Saxons

Starting in around 772, Charlemagne had as one of his main goals converting to Christianity the Saxons living on the northeast corner of his territory. The conversion was by force, of course, which is the way things were done in the middle ages.

In 772, his troops destroyed Irmensul, which was considered to be a sacred tree to the Saxons. That would have given great offense, obviously.

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Viking Era

More background on the Viking Age

Part of a large silver hoard, found in Denmark. “viking age silver jewellery” by mararie is licensed under CC BY 2.0

I will write a number of post on some of the more interesting items I learned from Robert Ferguson in his book The Vikings – A History.

Dating the start and end of the Viking Age.

He makes a number of interesting points in his opening chapter. For example there are multiple ways to define the start of the Viking age and multiple ways to define the end. Different writers and people groups have defined the end in 1016, 1020, 1066, , or even as late as 1263 (p 3).

The author’s more status-based definition is that at the start of the Viking age generally speaking all of the Scandinavian people were pagans (he uses the word heathens). By the end of the Viking age essentially all Scandinavians were Christians.

Watch out for agendas

Another interesting point is he asserts most writers and historians have agendas when writing about the Viking age.

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Alexander the Great, comparison of living standards, Roman Empire, Viking Era

Abundance of food today compared with routine scarcity of food earlier than 150 years ago.

Abundance of refrigerated fresh meet at your conveniently available grocery store. Not an option for anyone on the planet 200 years ago, to say nothing of the 10,000 years prior. Photo courtesy of Adobe Stock.

For most of history, one of the main challenges was getting enough food to eat. Keeping your family alive through the winter until you can harvest the first crop in the spring has been a worry for thousands of years.

That point is important when considering ancient finances back in the days of the Roman legions or Viking raiders. The following discussion, which is cross-posted from my other blog Outrun Change, provides some context on food scarcity.

 

Johan Norberg describes the tremendous progress in the last several hundred years in so many areas, such as life expectancy, health, sanitation, liberty, education, and equality in his book Progress: 10 Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. Here are a few more tidbits I found fascinating.

Consider the scarcity of food in the past and the drop in cost to feed a family in the last 150 years.

Food

Look at just a few of the statistics on availability of food, or rather the long running issue of scarcity of food:

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Viking Era

More details on the Skuldelev ships

Model of a knarr in the Hedeby Viking Museum in Germany. “Modell Knorr” by Europabild (no link to author provided) is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Chapter 8 of The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, discusses Ships and Seamanship, by Jan Bill. Chapter has a to-scale sketch of Skuldelev 1, 2, 3, and 5 on page 189. If I find that sketch in a publicly available media I will post it.

By the way, if you wondered (as I did), what happened to Skuldelev 4, I’ve since learned that what was labeled as #4 was actually parts of #2. Skuldelev 2 had deteriorated enough that parts of it looked like a different ship which was called #4. When the archaeologists realized they were the same ship, the #4 designation was dropped.

Chapter has lots of details on different ships that have been recovered. I’ll mention a few of the details.

Skuldelev 1 is a knarr, or cargo ship. (more…)

Alexander the Great, Middle Ages, Roman Empire, Viking Era

Most of the improvement in life expectancy in the last 10,000 years has taken place in the last 100 years.

Johan Norberg describes the tremendous progress in the last several hundred years in so many areas: life expectancy, health, sanitation, liberty, education, and equality. He discusses these wonderfully delightful trends in his book Progress: 10 Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. I will highlight merely a few of the many things I found fascinating in the book.

Life expectancy

This discussion is cross-posted from my other blog, Outrun Change, because  the information from ancient times is useful on this blog.

In particular, notice the major trend that there was no change in life expectancy from prehistoric times through the early 1800s.

People in the Reformation era lived roughly as long as during the Viking Age, who lived about as long as during the Roman era and New Testament times, who in turn lived about as long as during the time of Alexander the Great and stories in the Old Testament after the book of Genesis.

Book provides the following estimates of life expectancy, which I graph above:

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